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Understanding the latest twist in the Trump papers probe · Apple News Today

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  Gideon Resnick, Narrating: Good morning! It's Wednesday, August 31st. I'm Gideon Resnick, in for Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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  A new court filing has major revelations about the probe of Trump's handling of sensitive government files and possible obstruction of the investigation.
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  The Department of Justice told a judge that there was likely an effort to conceal classified documents, defying a grand jury subpoena to turn them over. It says it has evidence that government records were concealed and removed in order to obstruct the federal investigation.
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  The "Los Angeles Times" reports on the Justice Department filing, which is the most detailed accounting yet of its longstanding attempt to get the classified materials from Trump, which ultimately led to the search of his home.
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  The search uncovered 13 boxes or containers with information that was marked "classified." A photo in the filing shows a pile of papers with "secret" and "top secret" labels strewn on Trump's office floor next to a box of framed "TIME" magazine covers.
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  The DOJ filing was in response to Trump's request for a special master to look at the documents taken in the search and to take out any private or privileged papers. The Justice Department is telling the judge not to appoint a special master. It argues the request is just an attempt by Trump's legal team to disrupt the investigation. It's one of the concerns that former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade talked about on MSNBC earlier this week.
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  Barbara McQuade: It could slow down the investigation, but more importantly, it could slow down the damage assessment that the intelligence community wants to conduct.
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  There's a hearing on Trump's special master request that is scheduled for Thursday.
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  People in Jackson, Mississippi, are living in a state of emergency because of failures of the city's water infrastructure. There is a massive shortage of safe running water. Fire departments may not have the water to do their jobs. Residents can't get what they need to wash, cook, or flush toilets. The governor has called in the National Guard. The State Health Officer, Dr. Daniel Edney, spoke about how dangerous it is right now.
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  Daniel Edney: The water is not safe to drink, and I would even say it's not safe to brush your teeth with because we are not seeing adequate coordination and inability to consistently disinfect the water.
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  Recent heavy rain seems to have played a role in overwhelming the infrastructure and leading to the water plant failure. But as Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba points out, there were long-standing problems well before this recent downpour.
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  Chokwe Antar Lumumba: Our water treatment facility is in a constant state of emergency.
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  Before this emergency, the city had already been under a boil water notice. The Health Department found water that could cause digestive problems. Jackson is more than 80% Black, and some residents say the state has not done enough to fix problems that they've been complaining about for years.
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  For now, emergency officials are handing out bottled water. But it is a huge logistical challenge and there have been long lines. The local ABC station spoke to people waiting to pick up something safe to drink.
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  Jeanie Walker: I really think it's ridiculous. As long as it's been going on, seems like something would've been done by now
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  Unidentified Speaker: All the money that we done paid into the system for the last three or four years. If it's cold, it's broke. If it hot, it's broke. So, what we gonna do?
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  The last leader of the Soviet Union is dead. Mikhail Gorbachev was 91. He tried to fix the country's struggling economy and create more room for political freedom. Those policies were such a big deal that the Russian names were in American newspapers back in the '80s: perestroika and glasnost. Gorbachev pushed for big change, but he ended up presiding over the collapse of a superpower and the end of the Cold War. "NPR's" Moscow correspondent Charles Maynes talked about his legacy.
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  Charles Maynes: Well, he's clearly one of the giant figures of the 20th century. I mean, you know, he oversaw the peaceful withdrawal of Soviet forces from Eastern Central Europe. The Cold War, you know, essentially ended really without any bloodshed, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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  He's best known for his role in the end of the Soviet state. But perhaps the next biggest event of his career came soon after he took power. The first major crisis he faced was the 1986 explosion at the nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine. In Gorbachev's memoir, he wrote that the disaster "shed light on many of the sicknesses of our system as a whole."
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  Now, the world is watching to see if another nuclear catastrophe could be unfolding. Right now, U.N. inspectors are in Ukraine for what is being called their most important visit since Chernobyl. They're looking into the Zaporizhzhia plant that is currently under Russian control, the first in history to be occupied by a hostile force. It's Europe's largest nuclear plant, which supplied one-fifth of Ukraine's electricity before the war. "The Wall Street Journal" reports on the safety concerns.
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  Ukrainian officials say Russia moved military equipment to the site and the plant's employees have been working at gunpoint. Ukraine says Russia is trying to steal energy and risking nuclear catastrophe by shelling the area. It says this led to fires that damaged power lines and forced the plant to run on backup generators. Russia has said Ukraine is the one putting the site in danger.
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  Nuclear plants generate power, but they also need it to keep things stable and prevent disasters. Before he left for the inspection, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told "France 24" about the dangers of a power outage in a nuclear facility.
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  Rafael Grossi: If you have the external power feeding the plant, and that's feeding the cooling system of the reactors, interrupted, then you could be very, very soon in a place where you don't want to be.
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  The IAEA says it needs to see if safety and security systems are working properly. And inspectors want to assess whether Ukrainian staffers are doing okay. The agency says that stressed, overworked teams are a potential nuclear safety crisis.
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  Some green energy makes noise, but typically you can't hear it unless you get really close. One kind of renewable power sounds like this.
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  Ah, yes. That is the hypnotic whirr of giant wind turbine blades. Pretty relaxing, right? Now, imagine a future where you could not only hear the turbine blade, but also eat it.
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  Okay, let me back up and explain. Turbine blades are giant things, about as long as half of a football field. But when the blades get too old, they're often thrown away at landfills. And that is a problem for equipment that is supposed to be part of making more sustainable energy.
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  "Ars Technica" reports on new technology out of Michigan State University that aims to change that. A chemical engineer there developed a new polymer resin that could be strong enough to make up a wind turbine blade. But it is, crucially, also a recyclable material. So in theory, old turbine blades could have second lives as diapers, kitchen sinks, car tail lights, and even edible gummy bears.
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  The next step, though, is to make moderate-sized turbine blades and test them out in the field. The engineer says he did in fact make gummy bears in the lab. And ate them without getting sick. As to the flavor? Well, maybe we'll be the judge in the future.
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. We will talk with you again tomorrow.
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